healthcare reform - The S Corporation Association

Tax Outlook for 2010 — Starting in a Hole

The economic fear that gripped folks in the Fall of 2008 has resulted in a historic collapse of federal revenues.

Revenue collections since 1960 have stayed in a relatively tight pattern centered around 18 percent of our GNP. Considering the range of tax policies we’ve imposed on taxpayers during that time, the steadiness of the 18 percent mean is remarkable and suggests some sort of political or economic boundary is in effect.

That steadiness was broken last year when federal collections fell to their lowest level since 1950. Meanwhile, Washington’s response to the crisis has driven federal spending to levels not seen …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00January 15, 2010|

Items Remaining on the Congressional “To-Do” List

Friends of ours who follow Congress have begun quoting the old country and western song, “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?” With Christmas less than two weeks away, Members of Congress would like to leave soon, but a long list of to-do items still stands in the way:

Health Care Reform: Majority Leader Reid is still pressing to get the Senate bill finished before Congress leaves for the New Year. He still might make it, but the odds against him are climbing rapidly.
Government Funding: Congress passed a batch of …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00December 15, 2009|

Business Community Supports Estate Tax Relief

Last week, the S Corporation Association joined a group of nearly 50 small business organizations to support estate tax legislation (H.R. 3905) to make permanent rates and exclusion levels more favorable than those in place in 2009. In a letter to family business allies on the Ways and Means Committee, the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition stated:

The cost of the estate tax falls heavily on family businesses and farms. The cost comes not only from paying the …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00November 13, 2009|

Health Care Update

The idea of taxing high cost plans is relatively new, and there are many outstanding questions about how it would work. For example, how exactly how would this excise tax raise revenue? The Senate plan imposes a 40 percent excise tax on high value plans with a cumulative cost of more than $21,000. But medical loss ratios for private health insurance plans easily exceed 60 percent of premiums, so insurance companies confronted with a 40 percent excise tax will simply stop issuing those plans.

At the employer level, that means if an employer used to offer …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00October 6, 2009|

House Releases Health Care Legislation

As expected, House Leadership released its health care reform plan yesterday — America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200). As you can imagine, there are any number of provisions to explore in a 1000-page health care bill, but for S corporations, the big four items appear to be:

The new health insurance exchange;
The surtax on high income individuals;
The health insurance tax credit for smaller firms; and
The payroll tax penalty for non-participating firms.

Supporters of the plan argue that the combination of the health care exchange and …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:56+00:00July 15, 2009|